Ps. 8 (the transition)

But / you have made / him / little less / than God 
and / you will crown / him / with / honor and glory 
You / will make him / master / over / the work / of your hands 
You / have set / everything / beneath / his feet 
 all sheep / and cattle / and even the beasts / of the field 
 birds / of the air / and fish / of the sea 
whatever / passes / through / the pathways / of the sea 

We should be used to shocking transitions by now. David has experienced them (in Ps. 3 and 7), the sick man, and the man whose reputation is being tarnished—all of them have, within the span of a single verse, moved from near despair to victory. This plays itself in a particular way in each psalm so one should hesitate in drawing broad conclusions, and yet, there is worked into these psalms the sense of a sudden reversal that is remarkable. Here, we have another one, but it is of an entirely different order than the ones we have seen before. Those always involved deliverance from an enemy (either sickness or military or ‘workers of iniquity’). This transition is one that moves from an almost divinely inspired sense of insignificance to a likewise inspired sense of utter importance. There could be no greater shift in perspective than what we see here. And yet, I think there is something profoundly important to note in this shift and it is this: the same name that revealed and inspired the sense of insignificance is the same name that inspires this sense of absolute significance. It is no the case that man staring up at heaven is somehow ‘natural’ man devoid of the divine name and this verse constitutes man as he truly is. No, both of these experiences flow from the same source and that is the divine name, Yhwh. Notice how the heavens were ‘made’ by Yhwh and man is, here, ‘made little less than God’. Notice too how the heavens are the works of his fingers and yet, here, the works of his “hands” are placed beneath man. And, most importantly, that opening, and difficult to understand, verse, moves in exactly the same manner as the transition here: “From the mouths of babes and sucklings (the utterly small and insignificant) ----- you have established strength on account of your enemies to put at rest both foe and avenger (those who are made kings with everything ‘under their feet’)”. And I think, herein lies the clue to this transition: as we saw in our reflection on those verses, creation and exodus/deliverance are completely tied together. The name that revealed Yhwh to be creator was revealed when Yhwh was acting as deliverer. The revelation of Yhwh’s name made both of these realities spring up simultaneously: Yhwh is creator and Yhwh is the sovereign Lord of history (deliverer). Genesis (source of all creation) and Isaiah (source and guider of all political power) spring from the name and are contained in the revelation of the name in the exodus story. And, as we see here, something else is now understood to be contained in that revelation that we have not, thus far, commented on: Adam is revealed in the divine name as well. When Yhwh revealed to Israel his divine name he not only revealed it, he gave it to them. By handing it over to them, he took them to himself as well (he made them a “nation of priests”). In other words, by permitting Israel to appropriate his name, he expropriated them to his service; they became like holy objects of a temple, set apart from the world in order to be a light to the world. This is absolutely crucial: much reflection on the divine name centers on its ability to reveal Yhwh as the source of all (both creation and political power), but what is often lost sight of is the fact that it was not just ‘revealed’ but it was ‘delivered’. This ‘handing over’ to man is just as much a revelation of the name as what the name, in ‘isolation’, reveals “from itself”. Let’s put it this way: the name was not revealed to philosophers but to a small community of slaves who were crying out for deliverance; the name was not revealed to a mighty king; it was not revealed to a mighty hero; it was not revealed to a people who by any standard were powerful (except for the fact that they were apparently ‘multiplying’ rapidly in fulfillment of the genesis promise…). By revealing it to the enslaved, he revealed himself to the true Deliverer. By revealing it to the lowest, he revealed that man is the highest of all creatures. By revealing it to the lowest he revealed himself to be the highest of all gods because in their deliverance there would never be any confusion about who was destroying the gods of Egypt. It is here that we see Genesis emerge: Yhwh, inaugurating the creation of the world and making it a stage upon which man will become the lead actor, just as Yhwh stooped down to redeem the lowest of all people from the midst of chaos and make them his chosen people. From this insight, a light flowed back over time (and, it flowed forward as well….), to “the beginning”. Yhwh’s name, delivered to man, in a blinding moment revealed not just ‘creation’ but ‘man’. And, in an utterly shocking realization, man was seen to be “partner of God”, not his slave. This is how Yhwh’s name is ‘majestic’: it reveals both the utter and absolute distance of Yhwh from all of creation and the fact that man has all of creation placed “under his feet”. As we saw in our initial reflection on the word ‘majesty’ this is the proper response: a person in the presence of the ‘majestic’ both desires to look upon but is also convinced of the danger of doing so. The ‘majestic’ both calls forth and establishes a distance. One wants to ‘raise one’s eyes’ to it, but one knows that to do so would be foolish and dangerous. It is, in a word, exactly what happened when Moses approached the ‘burning bush’ and ‘received the name’. This psalm, and this transition in particular, plays out this response to the ‘majestic name’ is the same way, but in a different key. This is not all, though, tomorrow we will reflect upon something perhaps even more profound than what we have seen here—it involves the fact that in the Divine name, Adam/man is given the power to ‘name’ (subdue) all of creation.